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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27073177">The Sacrifice</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/TurtleTotem/pseuds/TurtleTotem'>TurtleTotem</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/F, Marvel 616/MCU Crossover, Post-Canon, Soul Stone (Marvel), Suicide</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 05:33:22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,233</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27073177</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/TurtleTotem/pseuds/TurtleTotem</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>"The Soul Stone requires a sacrifice of any that would wield it," the guardian said. "You must give up that which you love. A soul for a soul."</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Adora/Catra (She-Ra)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>160</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Sacrifice</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"We literally <em>just </em>saved the universe," Catra muttered as she and Adora stepped off Darla's ramp onto the surface of Vormir. "Can't it be someone else's job this time?"</p>
<p>"It's everyone's job," Adora said, "or didn't you notice the five other teams heading off to get the other stones? Anyway, we didn't <em>just </em>save the universe, that was almost two years ago!"</p>
<p>"Two years! Almost enough time for my hair to grow long enough for a ponytail. Definitely too long to go without a world-ending crisis."</p>
<p>Adora snorted and bumped Catra with her elbow, which, given that Adora was currently eight feet tall and strong as a tank, knocked Catra a little off her stride. "Weren't you the one complaining about being bored?"</p>
<p>"I never said I was bored, I said <em>you</em> were being <em>boring</em>."</p>
<p>"We were in public, Catra!"</p>
<p>"Where's your knife? You better not have left your knife."</p>
<p>Adora lifted the knife, returned it to its sheath. "Like I can't have a sword in my hand at a moment's notice…"</p>
<p>"You might not get a moment's notice," Catra said, almost singsong, because it was not the first time they'd had this argument.</p>
<p>"At least this place is pretty," Adora said as they looked out across the landscape of Vormir.</p>
<p>It was pretty, in an ominous sort of way—all in shades of twilight purple and orange, much of it covered in a sheen of shallow water. The only visible landmark was a pile of stone jutting up from the ground, not actually that high but mountainous in comparison to the rest of the landscape, with some kind of two-pronged tower at the top.</p>
<p>"The Soul Stone's signal is coming from the tower, like we figured," Catra said, consulting her tablet.</p>
<p>"Can you get any clearer bead on it, now that we're closer?"</p>
<p>"Nope. I don't know if it's the atmosphere or what, but it's still only giving us a general area."</p>
<p>Adora sighed. "Time for some mountain climbing."</p>
<p>They each had a coil of grappling rope on their belts, along with the knives to cut that rope if need be, but the way up the mountain was easier than they'd expected. There was a path of sorts, rough but walkable.</p>
<p>"I'm gonna laugh when it turns out this thing is just left out on an altar or something, for anyone to grab," Catra said as they reached the top. "I really expected to run into guards or traps or something by n—"</p>
<p>"Welcome, Catra and Adora, daughters of Shadow Weaver."</p>
<p>Catra spun toward the voice, knife in hand, but the speaker wasn't attacking them—yet. A figure of shadow, mostly hidden by a billowing black cloak. Was he floating above the ground? Catra stepped instinctively between him and Adora—and did a double-take as she realized Adora had left She-Ra form, and was looking down at herself in surprise, as if she hadn't meant to.</p>
<p>"Who are you? What did you do to her?" Catra demanded.</p>
<p>"I spoke her name in the true speech," the figure said, "which returned her to her fundamental form. Unexpected, but not harmful. As for me, I am the guardian of this place."</p>
<p>"How do you know our names?" Adora asked warily.</p>
<p>"It is my curse to know all who come here, seeking the Stone."</p>
<p>Catra had not put away her knife. "And what do you do with them, when they come?"</p>
<p>"We're not here for trouble," Adora said. "We'll bring the stone back when we're done."</p>
<p>"It will find its way back," the guardian said, unconcerned, "whether by your will or not. As far as what I do, in truth I guide more than guard. The stone guards itself, and will come to your hand only when you have earned that honor."</p>
<p>Adora frowned. "Earn it how?"</p>
<p>"Do we have to fight someone for it?" Catra asked, shifting her weight. They should have brought better weapons…</p>
<p>The guardian shook his head, a slow drifting motion that revealed more of his face than previously. It was a startling sight—blood-red and skeletal. His expression was grim. "The Soul Stone requires a sacrifice of any that would wield it. You must give up that which you love." He pointed to where the path led between the two prongs of the tower… and off the edge of a cliff.</p>
<p>Catra and Adora looked at each other, and Catra felt her heart dropping into freefall. Did he mean…</p>
<p>"Something I love?" Adora repeated. "Like… my sword, or…"</p>
<p>"No mere object will suffice. It must be a soul for a soul."</p>
<p>Adora was saying something, protesting to the guardian—Catra could barely hear it over the wild cascading of her pulse.</p>
<p>One of them was going to have to go off that cliff, and Adora was already eyeing the edge with a horrible, haunted determination.</p>
<p>"—not required," the guardian was saying. "You are welcome to depart without making an attempt."</p>
<p>"No," Adora said, her voice strained. <em>"Billions</em> of people are going to die if we don't get all six Stones, and soon. We can't leave without it." She took a deep breath, and turned toward Catra, reaching for her hand. The grim resignation in her eyes was more than enough for Catra to know what was about to happen.</p>
<p><em>No time</em>, Catra thought, heart hammering, <em>no time to think it through, or I'll be too late</em>.</p>
<p>She stepped behind Adora and slashed the back of her thigh.</p>
<p>Adora cried out, spun away just fast enough to avoid being hamstrung—<em>not deep enough, damn it</em>—and turned to grab Catra. But Catra had already leaped out of range, and was running for the edge of the cliff.</p>
<p>She didn't make it there before Adora tackled her to the ground. "Catra, stop! Stop it!" She held Catra pinned down, almost close enough to kiss. "Catra, you know it has to be me."</p>
<p>"No!" Catra writhed and thrashed, clawing at Adora without mercy. Adora only flipped her around, slamming her chest onto stone and locking her in place with one arm around her neck, arms drawn up behind her.</p>
<p>"This is why I'm here, Catra." There were tears in Adora's voice; one fell against the back of Catra's neck. "This is my job."</p>
<p>Catra snarled. "No it isn't, you just have a savior complex."</p>
<p>"Maybe I do!" Adora gave a slightly hysterical laugh. "You're probably right. You know me best. So you know what it would <em>do to me</em> to watch you die. Please, Catra," she pressed her forehead against Catra's hair, "please don't make me live with that."</p>
<p>Catra couldn't keep her next breath from turning into a sob. "So I'm just supposed to live with losing <em>you?</em> Not gonna happen, Adora."</p>
<p>"Look, we—we can figure something else out, we'll contact the others, we'll find some other way."</p>
<p><em>There's no time for that, and you know it. That's why we all split up to go after different Stones at the same time to begin with.</em> Catra didn't say it out loud, let her body relax just enough to be plausible—just enough for Adora to let her up—</p>
<p>Adora fell for it, and Catra took the chance as soon as it opened, knocking Adora over with her legs and landing a heavy punch on her face. Before she could recover from that, Catra had her pinned with a knee on her elbow and an arm across her throat.</p>
<p>"Guardian!" Adora cried. "Do something!"</p>
<p>The guardian only shook his head. "It is not my place to interfere."</p>
<p>"Adora," Catra said. "<a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26637679">You asked me once what I would do if you died</a>. Remember? I made a joke out of it, but I already knew the answer, Adora. <em>This </em>is what I would do." She pointed to the cliff's edge. "This is what I would do. This is what I <em>will</em> do—I swear, if you go over the edge, I'll just follow after."</p>
<p>"You won't. You have to take the stone back to the others."</p>
<p>Catra snarled. <em>"Fuck</em> you—fine, yes. And then I'll come right back here. Or our platform in the Fright Zone—you see, I've thought about this, I have it all planned out. Shouldn't one of us live, Adora? It won't be me either way."</p>
<p>Adora was shaking her head. "No, no, no, the others won't let you, they'll get you through it—Glimmer, Bow, Scorpia—"</p>
<p>"None of them has ever been able to keep me from doing what I wanted. They won't be starting now."</p>
<p>Adora smacked her head against the ground in frustration. "This isn't fair," she whispered. "We've fought so hard. We've had so little time together. It's not fair."</p>
<p>"Well, you know what Shadow Weaver used to say," Catra said, dimly aware that tears were streaming down her cheeks. "Life would be no fun if it was fair." With the tip of her tail, she flipped the coil of grappling rope off her belt into her hand, and started tying Adora up.</p>
<p>Adora fought, of course, swearing and pleading, and Catra had to hit her a couple more times to keep her down long enough to get it done. Unhelpfully, Adora's arms were slippery with blood where Catra had scratched her up already. Catra told herself firmly that there wasn't time to throw up, no matter how sick she felt.</p>
<p>"I'm sorry," she said hoarsely, when she felt sure that Adora couldn't get loose in the time it would take Catra to reach the edge, and ran.</p>
<p>Within a few steps, she heard the thumping, scraping sounds of Adora staggering to her feet with her arms tied, throwing herself after Catra—</p>
<p>Catra spun and kicked, without thinking, without looking. Her foot hit the side of Adora's knee, and shattered it.</p>
<p>Adora dropped, screaming, and Catra did too, scrambling away from what she'd done with her hand over her mouth.</p>
<p>Moments ticked by. The only sounds on the mountaintop were Adora's tortured, panting breaths and Catra's quiet sobbing.</p>
<p>"I fractured at least one leg," Adora said finally, the words breathless and broken, "when I jumped off Prime's platform. Maybe both. I was happy to do it, to save you."</p>
<p><em>I can't do this</em>, Catra thought.</p>
<p>"Don't let that be for nothing, Catra," Adora begged. "Please. Please let me save you."</p>
<p><em>I can't do this</em>—but that didn't matter. There was no choice, no opting out.</p>
<p>Catra forced herself onto her feet. "Maybe this is what you saved me for."</p>
<p>"No, Catra—"</p>
<p>"You're She-Ra!" Catra shouted. "People need you to survive. <em>I</em> need you to survive and to <em>hell</em> with She-Ra. This is how it's going to be, Adora, whether either of us likes it or not. Don't make it worse." She started backing toward the edge of the cliff.</p>
<p>"You're not going to kiss me goodbye?" Adora said hoarsely.</p>
<p>Catra had to stop and close her eyes against a wave of pain. "We both know you'd try something."</p>
<p>Adora didn't deny it; the fresh gleam of tears in her eyes was answer enough.</p>
<p>No last kiss, then. Breaking bone as their last touch. <em>We deserve better than this</em>, Catra thought. But they weren't going to get it.</p>
<p>She'd reached the edge of the cliff. She looked down—so, so far down. Flat, solid stone at the bottom, carved into some kind of ritual circle. That's where she would land, and that would be it.</p>
<p>She glanced at the guardian, who nodded solemnly. She was doing it right. Good. It would suck to screw up now.</p>
<p>The breeze was chilly here, tossing her hair. She felt tiny and exposed, trembling, her chest heaving. But she straightened her spine, and looked back at Adora—a long look, trying to fill her eyes, her mind, her everything, with this last sight. Adora was tear-streaked and grimy and bleeding and her expression was agony to look at, but she'd still rather see Adora than anything else, always.</p>
<p>Catra closed her eyes, and fell.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em>"No!"</em>
</p>
<p>A flash of gold light hit Catra's eyelids, and in the same instant, something wrapped around her ankle, jerking her whole body to a rough stop. Her head crashed against the side of the cliff, leaving her stunned. It took her a confused second to realize she wasn't falling anymore. She was being pulled <em>up.</em></p>
<p>Hands—familiar, huge, not Adora but She-Ra—hauled her up over the edge. The thing that had caught her ankle, Catra saw, was a whip, with the gold coloring and blue stone that indicated it was She-Ra's sword, transformed. Had Adora ever managed that before with the non-corporeal version of the sword? Perhaps she'd never been properly motivated before.</p>
<p>"Catra, Catra," Adora chanted, rocking with Catra clutched tight to her chest.</p>
<p>"Let me go!" Catra tried to fight free, but her head was spinning, her movements weak and disoriented. So close, she'd been so close to saving her. "Let me <em>go</em>, Adora!"</p>
<p>"I can't," Adora gasped. "I'm sorry. I can't do it."</p>
<p>Adora kissed her, hard and desperate; they were getting a last kiss after all. Catra pulled her closer, and bit her lip hard enough to draw blood.</p>
<p>Her spinning head was starting to slow down. Maybe she would still have a chance to—</p>
<p>In one quick motion, Adora lowered Catra to the ground and jabbed her sword—now a sword again—through part of Catra's shirt, all the way down into the stone.</p>
<p>It wouldn't hold her for long. But they both knew it wouldn't have to.</p>
<p>
  <em>"Adora!"</em>
</p>
<p>"I'm sorry." Adora darted to the edge of the cliff, looked back. "Please forgive me."</p>
<p>"I won't." Catra barely recognized the sound of her own voice, rasping and guttural. "I never will."</p>
<p>Adora smiled brokenly, Vormir's eternal twilight gleaming for a moment on her tear-streaked face and the shifting gold of her windblown ponytail. "I love you anyway."</p>
<p>She jumped.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The next thing Catra knew, she was bolting upright, screaming, in one of the shallow pools surrounding the mountain. In her hand, glowing like an ember, was the Soul Stone. Granted in exchange for the sacrifice of someone she loved.</p>
<p>It took everything she had not to chuck it away.</p>
<p>
  <em>Adora. Adora. Adora.</em>
</p>
<p>For some unknown amount of time, Catra lay curled in the water, hardly able to breathe, much less stand or walk. She more than half-hoped she would drown.</p>
<p><em>No, not drown.</em> She shuddered, shying from the memory of another pool, deeper, bright green—she wanted to die, but not by drowning. And she couldn't do it yet. She had to get the stone to Glimmer first. It was hard to remember why any of that mattered, hard to think at all beyond the endless echoing scream clogging her throat, but she knew it had to matter. Adora couldn't die for nothing.</p>
<p>
  <em>I can't do this.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>I don't have any choice.</em>
</p>
<p>Catra staggered to her feet. She could see the ship, not too far away. And in the opposite direction, about the same distance, was the mountain Adora wouldn't be coming back from, the mountain where her body lay shattered on stone.</p>
<p>Catra put the Soul Stone carefully in her pocket, and turned away from the ship toward the mountain. She would take the stone to Glimmer, yes. But she wasn't leaving Adora here alone.</p>
<p>It was the longest walk of her life, trying not to think about what she would find. How was she going to tell Glimmer and Bow what happened? How could she go home to rooms that smelled like Adora, to her clothes and her empty side of the bed and all her silly little favorite things? How could she live like that, even for a single day?</p>
<p>She didn't have to climb, at least. There was nothing she wanted at the top of the mountain. Only at the bottom.</p>
<p>Finally she rounded a corner of stone, and caught sight of the crumpled form of Adora.</p>
<p>Her legs collapsed like cut strings, and she fell to her knees, wondering if she would cry, or scream—but she didn't. It was as if there was suddenly nothing left inside her to do those things. As if her soul, desperate to escape the pain, had done everything short of actually leaving her body.</p>
<p>And then she realized she was looking at Adora. Not She-Ra.</p>
<p>Her pulse quickened. No—she couldn't afford hope, couldn't afford to even think it, if she did and was wrong she'd never survive long enough to get the Stone home—</p>
<p>Adora's chest rose. She was breathing.</p>
<p>Catra ran to her side, tearing her knees open on the stone as she slid down next to Adora, Adora who was not spattered or broken open, who looked completely intact and was definitely breathing, definitely had a heartbeat moving against Catra's fingertips on her throat.</p>
<p>Disbelieving joy did what grief couldn't; the cloak of numbness tore into sobs as Catra gathered Adora into her lap, crying her name over and over.</p>
<p>"C-Catra?" Adora's eyes opened a slit, then a little more, glancing around in confusion.</p>
<p>"What the hell was this," Catra screamed, not at Adora but to the universe at large, "some kind of sick joke? A test? Let me tell you what you can do with your <em>test</em>—"</p>
<p>"It was no test." The guardian appeared silently and without fanfare; Catra jumped and nearly drew her knife again. "I have never seen one survive the fall before. It appears that her alternate form absorbed the damage."</p>
<p>"But…" Catra's hand moved instinctively to her pocket, where she could still feel the bulge of the Soul Stone—but if they weren't supposed to have it, the last thing she wanted to do was point that out.</p>
<p>"Yes," the guardian said. "The stone has accepted the sacrifice. I assume because it was sincerely meant, despite the result. You are free to depart with the stone, fortunate ones." He faded away into the shadows.</p>
<p>"I knew She-Ra could heal quickly," Adora said shakily, sitting up with Catra's help, her back to Catra's chest, "but it's never been <em>instant</em>. I had no idea…"</p>
<p>Thank the stars they'd had no idea, Catra thought with a chill. If they'd had any suspicion that She-Ra could survive the fall, it wouldn't have worked as a sacrifice.</p>
<p>"I think we did find She-Ra's limits," Adora said, wincing. "My knee is still broken."</p>
<p>"We'll get you back to the ship," Catra said, "and tend to your knee. And get off this horrible planet. And get the stone where it needs to go. And save the universe, again. But first we're going to just sit here for a minute." She wrapped one arm more tightly around Adora, still in her lap, and with the other tipped her face the right direction to kiss her.</p>
<p>They kissed for a long, long time, and Catra wished they could just stay like that forever, in this moment of just being so glad they were both alive that they could barely stand it. Eventually, Adora was going to want to have a Talk about the whole suicide-plan thing, and Catra could already feel that her current crippling relief was going to become <em>incandescent rage </em>at Adora for doing this to her, as soon as they were somewhere safe. But that was all stuff they could deal with together.</p>
<p>As always, nothing really bad could happen as long as they were together.</p>
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